Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting starting with the 1920 The Story of Doctor Dolittle. He is a doctor who shuns human patients in favour of animals, with whom he can speak in their own languages. He later becomes a naturalist, using his abilities to speak with animals to better understand nature and the history of the world.[1]

Doctor Dolittle first saw light in the author's illustrated letters to children, written from the trenches during World War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull. The stories are set in early Victorian England, where Doctor John Dolittle lives in the fictional English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh in the West Country.[1]

The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts Never Before Printed (1920) began the series. The sequel The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922) won the prestigious Newbery Medal. The next three, Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1923), Doctor Dolittle's Circus (1924), and Doctor Dolittle's Caravan (1926) take place during and/or after the events of The Story of Doctor Dolittle. Five more novels followed, and after Lofting's death in 1947, two more volumes of short unpublished pieces appeared.

Gub Gub's Book: An Encyclopaedia of Food (1932) was an associated book, purportedly written by the eponymous pig. It is a series of food-themed animal vignettes. In the text the pretense of Gub-Gub's authorship is dropped, Tommy Stubbins, Dr. Dolittle's assistant, explains that he is reporting a series of Gub-Gub's discourses to the other animals of the Dolittle household around the evening fire. Stubbins explains that the full version of Gub-Gub's encyclopedia, which was an immense and poorly organized collection of scribblings written by the pig in a language for pigs invented by Dr. Dolittle, was too long to translate into English.

Doctor Dolittle's Birthday Book (1936) was a little day-book illustrated with pictures and quotations from the earlier stories produced during the gap between Doctor Dolittle's Return and Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake.

The main events of The Story of Doctor Dolittle apparently take place in 1819 or 1820,[4] although the events of the early chapters seem to be spread over several years. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle begins in 1839.[5] Backstory references indicate that Dr. Dolittle travelled to the North Pole in April 1809, and already knew how to speak to some species of animals at that date, suggesting that the early chapters of The Story of Doctor Dolittle take place before that date.[6] However, it's possible that the internal chronology is not consistent.

A US-Japanese coproduction animated series. Aired in the US in 1984 as The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle and in Japan in 1997 as Dolittle-sensei Monogatari. But in 1990 in Japan the first 6 episodes were released as a home-video release before being stopped and thus resuming entirely as a TV release 7 years later.

A Russian children's novel Doctor Aybolit (Doctor Veterinarian) by Korney Chukovsky (first published in 1924) was loosely based on the stories of Doctor Dolittle. The original novel credited Lofting's work,[7] as did Chukovsky in his memoirs.[8]

Norwegian playwright, songwriter, and illustrator, Thorbjørn Egner, made an album called Doktor Dyregod (Doctor good-toward-animals) with songs and story based on Doctor Dolittle.

All the books in the series have been translated into Japanese by Ibuse Masuji.

^"I can never be quite sure of my age," said Polynesia. "It's either a hundred and eighty- three or a hundred and eighty-two. But I know that when I first came here from Africa, King Charles was still hiding in the oak-tree — because I saw him. He looked scared to death." ..... "Dear old Africa!" sighed Polynesia. "It's good to get back. Just think — it'll be a hundred and sixty-nine years to-morrow since I was here!" — The Story of Doctor Dolittle

^"Of course now, when almost everybody in the whole world has heard about Doctor Dolittle and his books, if you were to go to that little house in Puddleby where my father had his cobbler's shop you would see, set in the wall over the old-fashioned door, a stone with writing in it which says: 'JOHN DOLITTLE, THE FAMOUS NATURALIST, PLAYED THE FLUTE IN THIS HOUSE IN THE YEAR 1839.'" — The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, part 1, chapter 6.

^"Yes, I discovered the North Pole in April, 1809. But shortly after I got there the polar bears came to me in a body and told me there was a great deal of coal there, buried beneath the snow. They knew, they said, that human beings would do anything, and go anywhere, to get coal. So would I please keep it a secret." — The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, part 2, chapter 11.